Editor's Note:Naked display of dissent straddles the boundary that separates fear from revolution. For India's Dalits, this proclamation of dissent has assumed many forms, both passive and combative. It has mutated over the millennia before BR Ambedkar prodded the word Dalit into mainstream consciousness, and transformed anew since then. Some things have not changed — songs remain the sinew of Dalit protest in almost all its configurations. And the lyrics that sew these together continue to serve as a manifesto of resistance. The poems in this series, drawn from Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi and curated by Krupa Ge, founding editor of The Madras Mag, represent the prosody of contemporary Dalit literature. They are accompanied by Chennai artist Satwik Gade's illustrations.

In this ninth edition of Bards of Resistance meet Marathi poet Loknath Yashwant. Loknath Yashwant is a leading Marathi poet with four collections, ‘Aaata hou jau dhya’ (1989), ‘Aani shevti kaay jhle’ (2005), ‘Punha chal karu ya’ (2009)’ ‘Baki sarva thik aahe’(2014). His work has been translated to Gujarati, Hindi, Urdu and Kannada. Kiran Meshram translated his first collection into a book titled ‘Elan’ and Om Prakash Valmiki has translated a collection ‘Akhir kya hua?’ in Hindi.

Lokanth has translated Mansur Eizaz Josh, Jayant Parmar and Nida Fazli to Marathi. His poems have been made into song-plays and a film was made based on his poem ‘bail’.

His poetry in English translation, ‘Broken man in search of homeland’ (Translated by Dr K Jamnadas and Yogesh Maitreya — who was also featured in this column, here) will be published soon. His poetry is taught in school as well as in postgraduate Marathi courses at several universities.

Dr GK Vankar, who has translated this poem from the original, is a Professor of Psychiatry. He has also translated Gujarati Dalit literary works in English as well as Hindi. His English translations of Jayant Parmar’s Urdu poetry is out as a collection titled ‘Inkpot and other poems’ and his translations of BN Vankar’s Gujarati Dalit poetry is titled, ‘Overbridge’. His translations have appeared in literary journals, ‘Indian Literature’ and ‘Muse India’, and ‘Shared Mirror’. He has created several blogs on selections and translations of Dalit poetry from Gujarati and Marathi languages. He was editor of biomedical professional journal, ‘Archives of Indian Psychiatry’ of Indian Psychiatric Society.